Hi everyone, I hope you are well! I know the day to commit to a college is coming up if you’re a senior—you got this! You’re so close! In this blog, I thought I would write about the process of finishing and submitting my thesis, which I did two days ago (yay!). Please email me at sgoldsmith24@amherst.edu if you have any questions!
Submission
For most people, the thesis is due a week or two before they have to defend it. For me, we picked a day for my defense, looked two weeks prior, and made that my thesis due date. This isn’t a final submission—after the defense, you get notes and feedback from your readers, and you have the chance to revise the thesis a little before submitting it to the Registrar in early May. That submission IS the final version. It is all electronic now, but they used to print and bind theses to submit them. I think I may want to print and bind my thesis just for myself, to have a physical reminder of what I produced while in college.
The final week
It was a crunch! My thesis advisor was a hero. I wrapped up my third chapter while also finishing up revisions to chapters one and two, and ended up writing my introduction and conclusion the two days before my thesis was due. Sigh. It worked out. I have friends who pulled more than one all-nighter in the days leading up to their thesis deadlines, and I didn’t do that a single time, so I take that as a victory. When I submitted, I just sent it in an email to my advisor, and that was that. I was shaking.
Now what?
Now I let it sit for two weeks, take a couple days off from thinking about it, and then prepare for my defense. In the French department, a defense entails presenting the process of the project for about 15 minutes, and then answering an hour a questions. I’m a little nervous, but I trust my thesis advisor, and she has told me not to stress. I effectively now only have three classes, because my thesis counted as a class credit, so now I can just focus on those three classes and get ready for graduation.
Thanks for reading!